Confessions of a Prairie Bitch (24 page)

A comedian friend of mine once told me, “You know, I love your act, but the stories you tell in the bar afterward are ten times as funny!” I decided he was right, so I incorporated all of the crazy stories that made everyone, especially the critic in my head, say, “Oh, no! You can’t possibly tell people
that
!” into the show.

I had also noticed for years that no matter what I was talking about onstage, someone in the audience always had to ask a question about
Little House on the Prairie.
Usually, it was annoying and broke my rhythm, but now I thought,
Well, there’s another solution. I can answer questions. That ought to kill some time as well.
So I set aside a portion of my act for Q and A. I would hand out index cards and pens before the show and tell the audience to ask absolutely anything they wanted. What the hell, I’d even bring the wig! I didn’t have the real one, of course, but I had a fake one from a party. I called this part of my act “The Wig: A Psychological Experiment (Is It Me or My Hair)?” We could try to see if I was evil or if the evil was a result of the blond ringlets. Then perhaps we could see if it worked on the audience as well. That’s it! I’d let them try on the wig.

Armed with a whole bag of totally new, insane, and profane material, I prepared to make my New York comedy debut at the Fez. But I was shocked by what I saw when I climbed down into the small basement club/restaurant under the Time Cafe in the Village: my manager escorting his mother and aunt to their seats. Thom hadn’t paid much attention to the details of my act, since he was just interested in ticket sales. I hadn’t told him about the new material, and he hadn’t asked.

I was horrified to see his guests. I said, “Thom, you brought your mom? What the hell were you thinking? Do you have any idea what this show is going to be like?”

I showed him the magazine to give him a taste of what was to come. He went pale.

“Well, too late now!” he cackled. He said it would probably be good for the old girls to get their blood flowing anyway.

The place was packed with about two hundred people, mostly gay men, and several clearly crazed
Little House
fans, women who had even braided their hair and brought
Little House
lunch boxes with them. These people were ready for anything. I went onstage, and I didn’t say, “Good evening” or even “Hi there.” I said, “Tonight we’re going to answer some questions, starting with, why am I such a bitch? You people want to know why I’m a bitch? I’ll tell you why. Do you have any idea the shit I have had to put up with?”

I didn’t address the audience so much as rail at them. I complained to them. I chastised them. I gave them all manner of shit—and called it shit to boot. And I confessed to every insane, embarrassing thing I could think of. I told them about Michael Landon’s not wearing any underwear; I told them about my gay father and Liberace; I told them about my ridiculous appearance on
Fantasy Island.

They loved it. They laughed, they screamed, they spilled their drinks. And then I pulled out the stack of index cards and answered their questions. I didn’t have written answers to any of them. I just read the question on the cards and answered them truthfully.

The crowd went berserk. Thom’s mother and aunt looked as if they could hardly breathe, they were laughing so hard. I didn’t do an hour and a half. I was onstage for over two hours, and when I was done, Chip came out and made me go back out onstage and answer more questions. I had to do an encore.

It was a complete smash. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before. I knew I would never do my old act again. I would never again lie or have to make anything up onstage. I was free. All I had to do was tell them the fucking truth.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

FIGHTING FOR CHILDREN…AND LARRY “F-ING” KING

CHARLES (ABOUT LAURA FIGHTING WITH NELLIE):
Now, Half-Pint, you heard what I said. You won’t do it again?

LAURA:
Oh no, Pa, I promise. I won’t have to. Nellie’s scared of me now!

O
n December 28, 2002, I got an e-mail asking me to be on the advisory board of a new organization, the National Association to Protect Children (PROTECT), whose goal was political action to change laws that directly affect abused children. But the group wasn’t just planning to do this. The e-mail was announcing its victory in North Carolina; PROTECT had already gone into the state house and successfully changed the North Carolina “incest exception” law. And here was the most extraordinary part: PROTECT didn’t even have an office yet. Some guy down in North Carolina had basically done all this out of his car with a cell phone. They had no T-shirts, no brochures—they didn’t even have stationery yet. They had made a huge difference in child abuse laws with apparently nothing but fifty cents, a screwdriver, and a roll of duct tape. They were the MacGyvers of the children’s rights movement.

Hell yes, I wanted to hang out with these people! But there was one little catch. I knew that when I did press about my work with the organization, one question was bound to come up: “So, Ms. Arngrim, is this a personal issue for you?” I knew that if I said yes to the e-mail, yes to the board, eventually there would be an interview or a Senate hearing, and someone would ask this question, and I would have to put up or shut up. I was no liar; I would have to go public with my own abuse story. I took some time to think about it. I talked to Bob and my shrink, and then I said yes.

I began getting calls and letters from the executive director, Grier Weeks. He did not directly ask me if I had been abused in our first conversation, but he posed several vaguely leading questions, which I answered with uncomfortable pauses. I decided to move things along.

“Okay, let’s just clear something up right now,” I started. “How can I put this? Like they say in the commercials, ‘I’m not just president of the Hair Club for Men, I’m also a member.’ Get it?” He got it.

At first, PROTECT seemed like it was going to be a low-effort type of charity gig, until we decided to “do California.” It turned out that California was one of the thirty-odd states with the dreaded incest exception, a legal loophole that allows far lesser penalties than those normally given to perpetrators convicted of sexually assaulting children, sometimes not so much as one day in jail, as long as they are the “victim’s natural parent, adoptive parent, stepparent, relative, or a member of the victim’s household who has lived in the victim’s household.” It’s a fact that the majority of child molesters are someone related to or known to the child. It’s almost always a father, or a stepfather, or a brother, or the teacher, or the baseball coach who is molesting the child. This exception even included house guests. Why on earth would they call something an exception that allows the majority of child rapists to go free? Strangers make up the smallest percentage, which means this wasn’t the exception, it was the rule.

This was the law that Grier and a skeleton crew of volunteers had overturned in North Carolina. They had managed Arkansas and were almost done with Illinois. PROTECT was on a winning streak, but Grier said California might be more difficult. Little did I know how right he was.

When I went to see my elected officials at the state capitol in Sacramento, I thought I would just go up there and explain this terrible mistake in the law books, and the nice elected officials would immediately rip this junk out of the book. Unfortunately, the scene did not play out as my fantasy script dictated it would. At my first meeting, I went with Paul Petersen from Minor Consideration and some friends of his, including other abuse survivors. They shared their stories. Afterward, a very nice Democratic female aide to a nice Democratic senator turned to me and said, “No one in Sacramento gives a shit that you were molested.” Ladies and gentlemen, may I present your tax dollars at work! To be fair, she was trying to be helpful. She was in no uncertain terms (or censored words) giving me Lesson 1 in Politics 101: politicians only respond to political pressure, and one person’s suffering is not considered political pressure.

The high point of my trip to Sacramento was meeting Republican senator James Battin, who told me that he thought this incest exception was one of the sneakiest things he’d ever heard of and was more than happy to take a shot at getting rid of it. He introduced a bill to remove it from California law but warned me that this was going to be a long process. We would have to go before the dreaded California Senate Public Safety Committee. He said that he had seen people “pour their hearts out, spill their guts in front of these people” only to be ignored and dismissed. “It could be a humiliating, soul-crushing experience,” he said.

“Oh, so it’s like going to an audition, then?” I replied. Senator Battin might be tough, but he’d never met a casting director before.

When I went before this committee, I was armed with a prepared statement, and I had both Grier Weeks and Dr. Bruce Perry from PROTECT by my side. I spoke from the heart about being raped by one’s own flesh and blood and pleaded for the civil rights of victims. Dr. Perry spoke about the terrible effects of incest, the damage done to victims who see their attackers protected instead of punished, and the total lack of difference in psychology between incest and nonincest offenders. He was brilliant.

To say that our comments fell on deaf ears, however, would be an understatement. Senator Battin had been right. Talk about a tough room! The panel of senators staring down at me from their dais exhibited a cross section of emotions ranging from dismissive contempt to smoldering rage. Unbeknownst to me, I was testifying not just before some of the most powerful senators in California, but some of the very politicians who had helped sign the incest exception into law in the first place.

When we were finished, the senators seemed to take almost gleeful pleasure in voting no on our bill. The incest exception would stand.

I didn’t cry like those politicians expected me to. I was from Hollywood; I knew what to do. I called my publicist! Not just any publicist. Harlan Boll is the world’s only gay Quaker publicist. He had a long-standing relationship with the producers at Larry King’s show, having booked many celebrities for interviews, and called them immediately. “Now, I’m not saying I have this, but I’m saying
if
I were to tell you I had a celebrity, a woman who had starred as a child on a greatly beloved family television show—which shall remain nameless—who is now willing to come forward about having been sexually abused, would you be interested?”

“Which television show?” they asked.

“Little House on the Prairie,
” he volunteered.

They were extremely interested. He explained that the interview wouldn’t just be about my own molestation, it would also be about the law, the shocking legal travesty that was the incest exception. He said this victim was now speaking out for millions of others. Then he told them the “theoretical” guest was me.

The producers had just one question. Not about the victim,
about the perp.

“Was it Michael Landon?” they asked.

“Acckkk! God, no! Are you crazy? It was a relative!” replied Harlan in horror.

“Oh. We’ll get back to you….”

To their credit, they did. But they wanted to know
everything.
I was told that I needed to have breakfast with one of the producers before they booked me, so they could see that I could explain myself—and the law—in a clear, meaningful way.

And so I did. I met one of the producers the next day at a restaurant near my home in Los Angeles and told her everything. She quickly lost interest in her food. By the time I was done explaining the incest exception and the workings of Sacramento, she stopped me. She got out her cell phone and explained that she would be calling the office, and I would definitely be doing the show.

I told her this wasn’t just about me, and, frankly, I didn’t really want to be by myself for this one. “I have other people who can come on the show, like lawyers and psychologists. Senator Battin himself has agreed to appear,” I offered.

She smiled at me. “Uh-huh. And what show were they on?” She explained that my intentions were all well and good, but that “people don’t know them. They know you.”

There was no escaping my
Little House
legend, and I had long ago decided I would not let it be a curse. But now Nellie was something else. She was a weapon I could fight this battle with, a sharp-tongued sword.

The producers still had many issues to work out, and I endured one conference call that was a bit surreal. Harlan and I were both on the line with another producer, and the issue of what “details” I would or would not be sharing came up. The conversation turned, well, graphic. Harlan was, as always, protective of me, and I finally had to stop for a moment and ask for clarification. “Excuse me,” I politely asked. “I just want to be clear about this. Are we ‘bartering’ for the details of my rape?”

Following a brief, uncomfortable silence, the producer gave me an honest answer: “Yes. Yes, that is technically what we’re doing here.”

“Thank you. I just wanted to be clear,” I replied. Oddly, this exchange made me feel better, not worse. If I was going to make a deal, I needed to know what the actual terms were. I now understood what they wanted. And so I explained what I wanted. I wanted to talk about the law, specifically the hideous reality of the incest exception and Sacramento’s vehement defense of it. I wanted to talk about PROTECT and the fact that this was the only organization fighting this. My wishes were all granted. The producer even agreed to show footage from my testimony at the hearing in Sacramento (along with the required
Little House
clips, of course).

Now came the fun part: telling my father. I technically had to, because before the show could tape, the legal department required that I have a person who could “corroborate” my story. I said that my father would. I almost wanted to tell them to call my brother. He’d certainly acknowledged what he’d done to enough people, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d have corroborated it himself.

I called my father, explained my involvement with PROTECT, and what had happened in Sacramento. He thought this all sounded great and was surprisingly quite enthusiastic about it

And then I broke the news: “I’m going on
Larry King Live.
”

He was silent for a moment. “Larry King? Did you just say Larry King?”

“Yup,” I confirmed.

He went crazy. He sounded like he’d just won the lottery. “Larry King!” he cried with joy. “Larry King!”

“Um, I’m going on to talk about my abuse,” I tried to remind him.

“Yes, yes, of course. This is fantastic! Larry fucking King! How long are you on for?” he asked breathlessly.

“Um, for the hour.”

“FOR THE HOUR?” he shrieked. “Oh my God! Who are the other guests?”

“Well, nobody. It’s just me.”

He completely lost it at that point. “Just you? You’re on LARRY FUCKING KING FOR THE ENTIRE HOUR, AND IT’S JUST YOU?”

He was ecstatic. He began to babble, “Oh my God, this is fantastic. I have to call everyone and tell them to watch it—”

I interrupted. “Look, Dad, I’m glad you’re so happy about this, but you do understand that I’m going on the show to talk about being repeatedly raped as a child under your roof, okay?” This announcement did not seem to rain on his parade in the slightest.

“Oh, yes, of course, that’s very serious.” He pretended to calm down. “And, yes, of course, you have to do that. I always figured you would someday. It’s for the best.”

He was being far more supportive than I ever could have anticipated. But then he couldn’t contain himself any longer

“But,” he began again, “it’s LARRY FUCKING KING! Oh my God! I’ll invite everyone over.” He began to think out loud. “Oh, God…do I have time to cook? No, wait, I’ll call a caterer.”

Yeah, sure, it was very bad that I got raped, and yes, of course, the legal injustice being visited on millions in the form of the incest exception needed to be stopped at once, but the important thing to remember was: I was going to be on TV! And in my family’s universe, that was what really mattered. So he had no problem at all speaking to the producers at
Larry King
or corroborating my story or anything else.

I wasn’t sure how to take this. On the one hand, it felt good to hear him be so supportive of what I was doing. Did he now truly understand what I’d been through? Is this what it took to get through to him? CNN? I sighed. No, this was not going to be an emotional breakthrough. This was just his favorite thing in the world. Publicity. He hadn’t changed a bit.

After all these years, I understood how my father’s brain worked, but it was a little hard to explain to Harlan and the gang at PROTECT, let alone other abuse survivors. “What sort of response did you get from your father?”

“Well, I think he’s still somewhat torn.”

“Oh?”

“Between the crab puffs and the spinach dip.”

So I appeared on
Larry King Live
on April 27, 2004. Before the taping, Larry came into the green room and explained to me, “Look, I know we have questions we already agreed I wouldn’t ask you. But I’m going to ask a couple of them. Do
not
answer them. I don’t
want
you to answer them. You can say, ‘I don’t want to talk about that’” or ‘None of your business’” or whatever you want. I’m not asking them to make you answer or upset you. It’s just here, basically, I’m the audience. They’re all thinking these questions. If I don’t ask, they’ll wonder why. But that doesn’t mean you’re supposed to answer me, okay?”